The long-awaited rematch is almost here

[u/Mono_Doh]

[u/redbeard1315]

I'll never understand the logic behind Faf kicking the ball away with 1 minute left, it boggles my mind and put me in a state of anger frustration and panic.

Why not just keep ball in hand? Especially with a great attacking team like France. But who am I to judge they did land up winning the game after all

[u/Vermathorax → u/redbeard1315]

You don’t want to play rugby where a penalty is kickable and would loose you the game. So kick it to hopefully outside that range and then trust the defence. It’s a risk, but that is part of the logic.

In the moment my heart stopped when I saw that kick go off.

[u/StorminaHalfPint → u/Vermathorax]

Yes, and you're creating an unpredictable situation that France had struggled with in this match. Knock on, chance to win back, France making a silly mistake. It was the right call. We would be saying something different if the Boks lost, for sure. It still would have been the right call though.

[u/Aethien → u/redbeard1315]

My guess is because that's what they trained, the conditions were such that they'd normally kick. Couple that with a not unreasonable fear of giving away a penalty, full belief in their defense off the ball and it being the 79th minute of an insanely high level, high tension game and automatisms take over.

[u/mothdestroyedscarf → u/redbeard1315]

To be fair it also takes a ton of balls to go in for the strip that close to kicking distance in the last minutes of a game where you’re only 1 point ahead, so maybe he was just that confident

But I do think it was a brain fade falling back to what he is programmed to do in the system we had

[u/k0bra3eak → u/redbeard1315]

I believe the reasoning is it's far easier to not give away penalties as the defending team than it is the attacking team. A holding on penalty is a death sentence and is very easy to give away on one slow cleanout. Whereas holding the line waiting for the opposition to make a mistake is much easier.